Good news: not enough garbage for burners

Garbage shortage prompts Metro Vancouver to scrap plans for new incinerator

BY KELLY SINOSKI Vancouver Province 

Metro Vancouver has halted plans to build another incinerator to burn the region’s waste.

Port Coquitlam Mayor Greg Moore, Metro’s board chairman, said while Metro remains committed to waste-to-energy over landfills, it worries there won’t be enough garbage to feed a proposed 250,000-tonne plant.

“We don’t want to build a facility that’s too big.”

The regional district has spent $4.5 million since 2012 on investigating waste-to-energy garbage disposal. Directors had pledged to release a short list of potential sites before Christmas and build as many as three waste-to-energy plants in or outside the region by 2018.

Garbage volumes have been dropping sharply as a more people reuse, reduce or recycle waste and organics.

In addition to the rise of recycling, Metro directors say part of the problem is that commercial haulers are taking Metro’s garbage to dumps elsewhere, particularly to Washington state. The regional district recently reduced its garbage tipping fees from $109 to $80 per tonne in hopes of drawing more commercial haulers back to Metro.

“If we knew all the regional garbage was going to a regional facility, it would make it straightforward,” said Malcolm Brodie, Richmond’s mayor and chairman of Metro’s waste committee.

The proposed waste-to-energy facility, estimated to cost $500 million, was expected to take garbage that now goes to the Cache Creek landfill, which is slated to close at the end of next year. However, the dump, which previously received 500,000 tonnes of garbage a year, now gets less than 200,000, Moore said.

Metro should be able to deal with the excess waste at the Vancouver landfill in Delta, which only receives half its licensed volume of 650,000 tonnes, Moore said, and the Burnaby incinerator, which accepts 280,000 tonnes per year.

Metro had planned to scale back the 25-year-old Burnaby plant once the new waste-to-energy plant was on stream, but says it will now spend another $30 million over the next five years on improved capacity, technology and further emission-control upgrades.

Vancouver Coun. Andrea Reimer heralded the decision as a win for taxpayers, saying the region can now look at more-sustainable options.

Vancouver has long opposed the incinerator plan, saying the region’s ambitious diversion targets would leave little for incineration and put pressure on burning recyclables such as wood and paper.

Metro aims to divert 80 per cent of waste from landfills by 2020, and now sits at about a 62 per cent diversion rate.

“Our vision from day one was increase diversion, the total amount of waste and we won’t have the volumes to justify a half-billion-dollar incinerator,” Reimer said. “This is a win.”

Abbotsford councillor Patricia Ross agreed, and said she hopes Metro and the Fraser Valley Regional District will work together to build a joint materials recovery plant.